In emerging markets such as Africa, the proliferation of mobile technology and other social factors have attributed to rapid increase in content digitization and creation. Such contents include e-books, multimedia resources, music, games, etc. This proliferation is driven by mobile or e-Learning, library services, the booming entertainment services, and the like, but is also partly driven by campaigns for environmental friendly products and less use of printed materials e.g. newspaper.
Typically, for easy distribution, digitized content is stored in centralized servers where it can be easily accessed via mobile or sensory devices either through WiFi or Cellular network. As a result of this, various models and content sharing protocols have evolved. For example, Peer to Peer (P2P) file/content sharing models have evolved from early networks like Napster to later models like BitTorrent protocols. Also for example, client-server file/content sharing involves content that is stored in a server and presented to clients on request. Presently with these techniques, a user has to maintain the connection between the peers when downloading content.
However, these file sharing models present various major drawbacks in resource constrained environments such as in Africa, where various resources such as intermittent connectivity, bandwidth, time, battery power, etc. are limited in view of the popularity of low-end tablet/mobile/sensor devices.
In case where a large file (e.g. multimedia files such as video learning content) is to be downloaded and the user has limited bandwidth, the content acquisition is constrained by the above-mentioned factors.
Although cellular network connectivity has greatly improved, this is often not the case in remote or acute resource constrained areas such as in African classrooms, leading to poor learning and teaching experience. Improved methods for accessing network-stored content would be desirable to improve such resource constrained accessibility.